Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ep. 75: Does your teenager have climate anxiety?
306 Plays1 year ago
Climate expert and campaigner Mark Ballabon says that today's teenagers feel under immense pressure, and have a lot of anxiety around the state of our planet. His book, Home, is described as a coming of age story for the Greta Thunberg generation. He talks to me about how teens are feeling, why some of them shut down conversations about the environment, and what we - as parents - can do to help them work out how they feel about climate change and activism.
2:30 - Mark describes his own teenage years as "a bit of a car crash". He was sent to a very academic school and found it very stressful. Mark talks about academic pressure and how it made him very introspective and self-conscious. He says it was this that eventually made him stop caring what other people thought, and start questioning the bigger issues of life.
7:15 - Mark talks about how we all compare ourselves to others, especially in the world of social media. He says "every single relationship that you will ever form in your life depends upon your relationship with yourself."
10:00 - Why empathy is so important for authenticity, and how important it is to understand each other. It's why Mark used young editors from all over the world to help him write his book.
14:00 - Why we must never - as parents - use the same slang that our kids use.
16:30 - How to listen well so we can empathise with our teenagers, and how to show up with our own authentic feelings and model emotional maturity.
25:45 - "We don't understand people because we're always assuming that we do." A brilliant quote about what stops us communicating effectively and understanding our kids.
28:20 - How should we cope with our teenagers' fears over climate change.
34:00 - Are some forms of climate activism detrimental to the cause?
40:00 - What more can we do individually to save the planet?
Find out more about Mark Ballabon
More teenage parenting from Helen Wills:
Helen wills is a teen mental health podcaster and blogger at Actually Mummy, a resource for midlife parents of teens. Thank you for listening! Subscribe to the Teenage Kicks podcast to hear new episodes. If you have a suggestion for the podcast or want to hear more on parenting teenagers contact me on Instagram and Twitter @iamhelenwills.
For information on your data privacy please visit Zencastr's policy page
Please note that Helen Wills is not a medical expert, and nothing in the podcast should be taken as medical advice. If you're worried about yourself or a teenager, please seek support from a medical professional.
Podcast produced by James Ede at Be Heard production.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Teenage Kicks Podcast
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to the Teenage Kicks podcast where we take the fear out of parenting or becoming a teenager. I'm Helen Wills and every week I talk to someone who had a difficult time in the teenage years but came out the other side in a good place and has insight to offer to parents and young people who might be going through the same.
00:00:36
Speaker
I have two teenagers studying politics and our conversations over dinner can get very interesting. Teenagers are passionate about current affairs and one of the things mine worry about a lot in 2023, and I don't think it's just them, is the climate crisis.
00:00:54
Speaker
If that resonates, keep listening.
Meet Mark Balabon: Philosopher & Environmentalist
00:00:56
Speaker
My guest today is Mark Balabon, a philosopher, environmentalist, and author who's been teaching and writing about personal development, self-leadership, and environmental issues for over three decades. He's recently written a book for young adult readers, which focuses on some of the key contemporary issues they face, from relationships, body image and bullying, to the climate emergency.
00:01:23
Speaker
Home, My Life in the Universe is a coming of age story with a difference. Mark campaigns for protection of the countryside, biodiversity and natural habitats. The book is a coming of age story that reflects his drive to help young people know what impact they want to make on our world. It's been called Sophie's World for the Greta Thunberg generation.
Mark's Turbulent Adolescence & Philosophical Journey
00:01:47
Speaker
Mark, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Helen.
00:01:51
Speaker
It's great to have you here. This is something that my kids don't talk about a lot, but when it does get raised, I get a sense that there is a little bit of panic in their systems, and I don't know how to deal with that. And for those who are listening, not watching, Mark's giving me a nod here. So I'm getting that this is an issue for a lot of people, a lot of our younger generation. We're going to talk about that, but first, Mark,
00:02:17
Speaker
As is in keeping with the tradition of this podcast, I want to ask you about your own teenage years. Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like for you as a teenager? Yeah, thanks, Helen. Well, a bit of a car crash. Great. We love that here. A bit of a car crash. It was brewing when I left my friendly, rough and tough primary school.
00:02:45
Speaker
And my parents wanting the best for me sent me to an extremely competitive public school. And I remember at the age of 11,
00:02:58
Speaker
subjects to tests every week. The tests were posted outside the classroom. I was coming bottom on a regular basis. And within a few months, I'd gone down with eczema, acne, bronchitis and asthma. And had to take three months off of school. The pressure was just unbelievable. I was 11 years old. So that was my pre puberty introduction to life. And
00:03:28
Speaker
I think it kind of makes or breaks you. I mean, the school was like a feeder school for Oxford and Cambridge. And I think it's changed a lot today in fairness. But it was very troubled. So what it did to me is by my first teen years at 13, I became really introspective, over sensitive, took everything very personally, was still very
00:03:56
Speaker
self-conscious because I'd broken out in spots and I had a really aggressive form of eczema and so on. So not good start and obviously the school was very competitive and I wasn't intellectually brilliant. I don't know how I got into the school but
00:04:17
Speaker
So, yeah, it was a struggle. But what it did is it turned me so deeply inside that at a certain point I kind of stopped worrying about what everyone thought about me and started a journey into some of the biggest questions. Because the good thing about the school, and it was an all boys school, which also wasn't the healthiest thing, I must say,
00:04:43
Speaker
But there were some really interesting people there, and you could get into some really deep conversations. So, yeah, and we were all into kind of Pink Floyd and big questions, and we were starting to read books, Doris Lessings, Shikasta, all kinds of things really questioning life, its meaning. Then I got into philosophy, then I got into the major philosophers.
00:05:13
Speaker
It was very defining time, my youth, and set me through all the sort of crashes of it. It set me on a course which has been incredibly rich and liberating.
00:05:25
Speaker
Wow, that is so interesting. Thank you for sharing that because we talk a lot here about the kind of crisis of confidence that happens in adolescent years and how people didn't feel like they were popular enough, they didn't know how to fit in. And we have got a couple of episodes where we talk about the pressure to perform academically in school.
00:05:51
Speaker
And I've seen it a little bit with my own kids. They're in a very high performing state school. And they've responded well, but I do sometimes worry that that may have been at the expense of
00:06:09
Speaker
introspection and personal reflection and personal development, that those things may have taken a backseat to academic and professional development, which is a bit of a treadmill that a lot of us go on. And so it's really interesting to hear from somebody who went the other way because of it.
00:06:33
Speaker
The thing is that when you have systems where the measurement of achievement is what grades do you get? It's a very, very rough measurement of capability. And yet, certainly when
The Role of Empathy in Relationships
00:06:51
Speaker
I was growing up, it was the measurement. It determined what job you were going to get and all the rest of it. And I think there's more pastoral
00:06:59
Speaker
and extracurricular activities in schools and particularly universities these days. So that kind of softens it and makes it a bit easier. But nevertheless, the pressure to compare yourself and obviously social media where you're presented with a gallery of role models that
00:07:23
Speaker
you know, as REM said, happy, shiny people. They're all happy, shiny people. And why aren't you a happy, shiny person? You know, and so that ongoing comparison is extraordinarily self-defeating. So one of the workshops that I do in schools is called Empathy. And one of the philosophers that I've based it on is every single relationship that you will ever form in your life
00:07:53
Speaker
depends upon your relationship with yourself. Love it. So it's like if I'm going into say an assembly of 250, I don't know, year 8s or year 9s,
00:08:08
Speaker
My first audience is myself, so I have my own standards and principles that I try to adhere to. I call it the Oreo grid, which is O for original. Is what I'm doing original? Because if it's not, I'm not interested, so why would anyone else be? Is it relevant?
00:08:29
Speaker
Because if it's not relevant, what the hell am I doing there? Is it engaging, which is the E? So if you don't actually interact with who you're working with, what's the point? You're just giving a lecture and as you probably know, young people as a mother, you know, immediately. And the A is for accuracy.
00:08:51
Speaker
You know, my book Home took me over seven years because I wanted to make sure that every single character was absolutely accurate and authentic to the real people that they were based on. So I did a lot of interviews with the real people. Yeah. And you've got you definitely want you to say a bit more about your book later on, but you've got you've got young editors who've helped you craft the story as you've been writing it. Is that right?
00:09:20
Speaker
Well, yeah, because that's a part of empathy, because, as you probably noticed, I'm, you know, Leah's a 14-year-old girl, and I'm not a 14-year-old girl. Yeah, yeah. I know that might sound a bit obtuse, but...
00:09:34
Speaker
So, you know, what is life like for a 14-year-old girl? And it's interesting, not just the 14-year-old girl that it was based on, but all girls of that age across the planet. Because a 14-year-old girl in London is experiencing things different for a 14-year-old girl in, say, in Chad. One of the characters is from Chad in Central Africa. So,
00:09:59
Speaker
It's really interesting, Helen, because part of empathy for me, yes, it is putting yourself in the shoes of your son, putting yourself in your shoes of your daughter. But in the bigger picture, what are girls or boys or whatever gender, what are they actually going through in the bigger picture? Because there's also, for example, hormonal things that
00:10:24
Speaker
you know, every 14 year old is going through. Yeah. And to understand that, you know, and particularly for a man to understand, you know, all the internal workings, for me was really important because, you know,
00:10:40
Speaker
So empathy forms a really important part of it. And it relates also into the climate crisis as well and what you were asking about before. But before going into that, just one mention about the seven young editors. So they were 11 and 12 years old when I started sending them manuscripts. And of course, they'd never done any editing before.
00:11:04
Speaker
And they were from all over the world, from Auckland in New Zealand, the two daughters of the illustrator, Grant McDonald, who helped, all the way over to Toronto. And it was absolutely fascinating, even to every single detail, like
00:11:23
Speaker
Ruby, the illustrator's daughter in first draft, I had Leah's best friend is called Taka. One of the dialogues, Leah goes, me and my BFF, Taka. Ruby goes, don't say BFF. I said, but I've researched it and young people do say BFF. She said, but we don't say BFF over here. I said, oh, I'm sorry. Can I say bestie then?
00:11:51
Speaker
She said, bestie. Don't say bestie. How old are you? Yeah, exactly. So I said, what do I say, Ruby? She said, just say best friend, Mark, for God's sake. And then Sage in Toronto, she
00:12:06
Speaker
I sent, when I sent her the first six chapters, which Leah actually calls windows, not chapters. But anyway, I sent her the first seven and then she sent a very short terse note back saying, I absolutely love it. Please delete chapter three. Oh.
00:12:22
Speaker
And I said, what? And I spent years doing this. So I phoned her up in a panic. I was staying in a hotel, writing in sorry. And I phoned her up in a panic and saying, why should I delete chapter three? And she said, oh, well, it's a story of Leah's mentor in a cave. She said, it's really fascinating. It slows the story down. By the time you finished, it's quite boring. So could you delete it? And I remember.
00:12:50
Speaker
I got off, so I got off the phone to her. I read chapter three and I thought, I just deleted it. She was absolutely...
00:12:59
Speaker
So I think empathy is such an important part of life because I was able to experience the story through the young people I was actually writing about. So the best compliment I got was after about three and a half years. And one of them wrote to me and said, well done. You've written yourself out of the story now. It's fine.
00:13:23
Speaker
Oh, God, that's so deep and so true. There's so many things that I want to say and ask here. I love that whole business of you can't use their slang.
00:13:40
Speaker
I've learned that the really hard way by doing it sometimes and getting the look and the look of disdain that you only really get from your own kids. Other people's kids will not do that to you, but they will just go away and go, weirdo. We had the debate on our family WhatsApp group just this week over the word slay.
00:14:02
Speaker
which is a word that i'm not even going to try to define it because i know that i will get it wrong and any teenagers listening one might go yeah you're about right and the others will go well yeah but not really and completely wrong actually and i
00:14:20
Speaker
At the end of the day, I've learned that I have to understand what they mean when they say that, and I do, but I can't try and explain it myself or reproduce it anywhere, especially not in writing.
How to Listen to Teenagers Effectively
00:14:35
Speaker
It's very funny. The other thing that I wanted to ask you is empathy. If you're talking in schools to teenagers, we're talking about quite young teenagers there,
00:14:48
Speaker
How do you get teenagers to understand the concept of empathy? Because I absolutely, I totally hear what you're saying and I buy into it and I try my very best to empathize with my kids. And I feel like I have empathy with teenagers at large. I think there are really
00:15:10
Speaker
badly spoken of group of people in general terms by certain sections of the population and very unfairly. And I have huge empathy with other teenagers that I know are mostly wonderful people who are just as flawed as me. But what I do notice is that they struggle to
00:15:35
Speaker
They may have empathy, but they struggle to voice it or show it. Is that your experience? It is by and large. The thing is, Helen, there's certain things that bypass the kind of technical solution to how to empathize because, you know, you love your children. You know, parents love their children and love is a bridge.
00:16:02
Speaker
Um, you know, they can, they can feel that love and they can feel that you're trying, um, all the time because you want the best for them. And they know you want the best for them, even when they swear at you and, you know, run out and slam the door. But so they know you're trying the, I think the, the art and it's more an art than a skill in empathy is number one, to be able to listen because.
00:16:32
Speaker
We filter things when our children speak to us, when children speak to us, we're constantly filtering them. There's certain things we'd want to hear. There's certain things that we'd like to hear. But we filter them and we color them. So we're not unbiased when we're listening. And obviously, as a parent, it's very difficult. But sometimes they don't want solutions. They don't want you to tell you, they don't want
00:16:59
Speaker
you to tell them the answer to something, to sort everything out, to make everything better. They just want you there, shoulder to shoulder, just listening. Will you just listen? And it seems so simple, almost simplistic, but it's such an important first step. And it's interesting because listen, I sometimes do this on the board, particularly when
00:17:26
Speaker
lots of people are sort of messing around in the back row. And I put up on the board, I put up the word silent. And I say, well, if you move to all the letters around, what do you get?
00:17:40
Speaker
And eventually they get listened. And I said, well, look, so when you're silent, you're able to listen. So then they all shut up. It's just a way, like a soft skill way of bringing people to a certain inner peace in themselves where they don't feel threatened. They don't feel that you're moralizing. They don't feel that you're about to deliver the next lesson, the dos and don'ts.
00:18:09
Speaker
That's why empathy has become such a big thing now in children's education. There's also the Empathy Lab and various other organizations that are promoting that. But one last thing I would say about it is that, again, this might sound simplistic, but empathy also begins, like if you look at yourself, Helen, you may immediately look at how can I,
00:18:38
Speaker
improve my relationship with my son or my daughter. But what about, you know, the starting point? Okay, so how can I empathize with myself?
00:18:49
Speaker
How can I build a more peaceful, a more kind relationship with myself? How can I take the pressure off of myself? How can I stop being so hard on myself about everything and taking everything personally? And even that sort of deflation of the internal pressure to be the perfect
00:19:10
Speaker
mum or dad or whatever is absolutely crucial because then they feel that, they pick up on that and then they want to be around someone who is more at peace with themselves. And that's a very attractive proposition. So when I go to say an assembly or meeting groups, large or small,
00:19:33
Speaker
My first responsibility is to my own inner state in ecology. And over the years since I've been doing schools intensively, I've also been learning
00:19:47
Speaker
from the teachers a lot and librarians, the kind of soft skills of dealing with people who are misbehaving, sometimes not because they're, you know, bad behaving people, but just simply got so much energies, they don't want to sit down for an hour. Nothing. And how do you
00:20:05
Speaker
How do you navigate yourself through that so that they can be engaged? And often I will just literally, if I'm going to say a theater star, I'll just walk over to the people who are messing around, smile, and maybe ask them a question and engage with them rather than reprimand them as the first principle.
00:20:26
Speaker
Well, look, you're speaking to someone who's training as a counselor, so I get the whole... I am so able to empathize with other people, but that point you made about having empathy for myself, I'm a work in progress.
00:20:43
Speaker
I'm hoping by the time I qualify I'll have nailed that, but I feel like it's a lifelong expedition to have that level of acceptance, shall we say, of myself.
00:21:01
Speaker
It's such a Western world problem and unfortunately most of us raised our kids with that issue as well. I love the idea of getting alongside our kids and letting them see
00:21:15
Speaker
of vulnerabilities, if you like. And I have got an experience of that in my own family just recently where as a direct result of me not trying to pretend that I'm perfect and I've got it all together and hiding my feelings because we do as parents, unfortunately,
00:21:36
Speaker
have this concept that we have to hide our emotions from our kids. We can't let them see us upset or angry. And it's not the case. It's more about being authentic with our feelings and owning them for ourselves rather than putting them on somebody else. And that's the big struggle, I think, for all of us in the Western world. It's a really tough one. But loads of people have made that point on this podcast about
00:22:05
Speaker
not trying to fix our children's problems when they bring them to us. And I've experienced that myself. I've had to really make a shift. My kids, at an eventual point, both stopped telling me about their problems. And then, of course, I went into overload nag mode. Why would you need to tell me about your problems if you want help with them? And actually,
00:22:27
Speaker
It wasn't that they wanted help with them, it's that they wanted to be seen and heard and understood. And then they could go out and solve their problems on their own. And that as a parent is a really difficult thing to get your head around. Yeah, which doesn't mean that you don't at some point nudge or suggest options, but I've got a
00:22:50
Speaker
It's a really dramatic, in the first chapter of Home, window one, it's called. So the chapter's called My Life-Changing Essay. So in English class, Leah and her class are asked to write an essay. And there's a particular reason that the teacher asked them to write this essay. And it's an essay about understanding people.
00:23:15
Speaker
And so she writes an essay and her essay is printed in the book. And she writes an essay called Understanding People Through Their Stories. And so I read you this little bit here because I think it says everything. And she talks about, she's only got one friend at school. She's a total loner at school and her best friend and only friend is Taka. So she says,
00:23:45
Speaker
And this is what she writes in her essays. She was the bold, brave, and popular one at school. The red streaks on her long curly hair were a little warning sign that she was not to be messed with, whereas I was often to be found eating lunch on my own or reading at the back of the library. It's changed a bit though. I'm still the quieter one, but much more outspoken in class now. Everyone says we're like sisters. It's in the stars too.
00:24:13
Speaker
Aries and Liberans are sister signs. My mum thinks our differences make us much more interesting. She told me that quiet folk and chatty folk mix well. They each have something the other needs. That makes me think that different people don't need to fight each other about being different. They can enjoy their differences and learn from them.
00:24:40
Speaker
Most adults who believe that they really get me usually describe me as precocious. They use that label to criticize me in different ways. Either she's gotten way too big for her boots since she became the under 15 school spelling bee champ, or she uses way too many long words for her age, or
00:25:04
Speaker
She's unusually cute and clever for someone who's so weird. So basically they don't get me at all. How can you understand a person if you squeeze them into a tiny box containing one word like weird? Boxing is easy and understanding is not. And that's the whole point, I think. We don't understand people because we're always assuming that we do.
00:25:33
Speaker
Oh, that's so good. Isn't that the problem with the world and all of the arguments and wars that happen? You need to pluck that girl out of that book and she could be prime minister. Well, I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful. I mean, she's only 14, 15 when the book finishes, so she's got time. Yeah. Oh, I love that. That's such a... Yeah, I mean, isn't it true?
00:26:01
Speaker
Yeah, I want to talk about the environmental thing and I said this to you just before we started recording.
00:26:12
Speaker
I've had a couple of conversations, not many, with my daughter more than my son. It's my son who's the geography nerd. I'm not being derogatory there. He will describe himself as a geography nerd and he loves it and he's proud of that. It's fine. But I've had more conversations with my daughter who's a lot more matter of fact about it.
00:26:37
Speaker
But when we've talked about it, it's been along the lines of, well, yeah, but it's really big, isn't it? And actually, if you want to protect the environment, you need to remember to recycle your yogurt pot rather than putting it in the bin. This is me to her, who is worried about the environment and the climate crisis. You know, teenagers just don't always think in the moment they just are on autopilot some of the time, and that's just normal.
00:27:06
Speaker
But when we've gone a bit deeper, I've sort of gone, it's just so big and actually you could take yourself down a rabbit hole of anxiety if you try to worry about how it's going to get fixed.
Youth Anxiety & Climate Change Impact
00:27:24
Speaker
And so the, what happens to me at 57 is I go,
00:27:33
Speaker
I can't fix that other than by doing all the stuff that I can to recycle, always knowing that that is a flawed system to use less, to buy more sensibly, eat differently, et cetera. And I do that in my own small way. But beyond that, I have to put it out of my mind and not worry about it, because otherwise it'll take me down.
00:27:57
Speaker
And I worry about it not for my own benefit because I'm 57 and I'm going to be dead before the worst happens. But I worry about it because I've got kids who have to live with the consequences of it all. And I panic about it because of the media saying it's irreversible. We've gone past the point of no return.
00:28:15
Speaker
That must be an overwhelmingly scary thing for a child to sense and to feel that the adults in the world have got that kind of attitude. But as an older person, I don't know what to do with that. What's your take on that?
00:28:35
Speaker
Okay, so, Helen, look, this is over and above a podcast. This is so crucial, what you're asking. And because I've been studying the climate science since all the climate mapping was done, people knew about this over three decades ago. All the trends were mapped. They were already charting how many parts per million
00:29:03
Speaker
CO2, atmospheric CO2, this was all done. So the science was already there. They could see the way the trends were going. The Industrial Revolution kicked off the most extraordinary sort of rape and pillaging of so-called planetary resources. And
00:29:28
Speaker
It is, as you say, it is absolutely terrifying for young people. I mean, talk about climate anxiety and it's becoming almost pandemic. I mean, I've had it myself at different points because sometimes, as you absolutely say, it becomes overwhelming. Now, it took me a long time to design a bridge that adults, children could walk across that could offer a different perspective that was both
00:29:57
Speaker
liberating for the person. And also something very, very practical. And I called the workshop that I do, which is the most popular one that I do. And I'm now being invited to schools around the world to do this. I've got some invites coming up to Dubai in the run up to COP 28, some international schools out there. And I've
00:30:25
Speaker
A few months ago, I came back from Spain to some international schools out there too. This is the big one. Climate positive is actually a climate science term. It goes beyond net zero, which most scientists think that
00:30:43
Speaker
All the talk about net zero is hot air, contributing, of course, to global warming. And the target should be climate positive, which means if, essentially, you take out more greenhouse gases than you put in and you're on a course to reduce everything. But climate positive, I use also in Look,
00:31:06
Speaker
let's feel good about what we do, because it is, you know, based on Gandhi's be the change you want to see in the world, which I know has been used a lot, but it is a very profound, it's about coming home to yourself, be the change, be the example. So when I stand up in front of people, you know, I know where everything I'm wearing comes from, for example, like today, you know, I'm wearing, I don't know if you're meant to say this, but
00:31:32
Speaker
you know, so my shirt is from weird fish. And you research, you know, my hoodie is from a Danish company, Neutral. Most of my shirts are from Patagonia. And so you research the company. So it's not just, yeah, I'll recycle a bear and maybe I'll, you know, become a vegan or something. You really get into the way of life. It becomes
00:31:57
Speaker
a lifestyle that you really feel good about it. And I do. So when I'm standing up there, I mean, I tell you, I show an article I wrote on skin because I had eczema, disco eczema, which is really aggressive form, and taking all the lotions for it. But I ended up curing it through natural methods. Part of it was to do with my psychology and my self view, which was so inferior. So
00:32:27
Speaker
It's the same with the climate. If I stand up and I can, everything that I'm wearing, I know where it comes from. It's organic cottons. It costs a bit more, but it doesn't cost the earth. And that's the important thing. It costs a bit more. You go into Tesco, okay, the organic lettuce is a little bit more. And if you can't afford it,
00:32:52
Speaker
um then then by all means grow your own because you can grow winter lettuce i mean when the thing is helen when you get into the way of life that is climate positive you create a climate positive family you actually start to feel good about what you're doing and instead of feeling
00:33:11
Speaker
the bitterness which i totally understand and the anger like you know Greta Thunberg's famous how dare you speech um you know god i get that that broke my heart in two listening to that you see excuse me
00:33:27
Speaker
So you get that, but it's a question of how are you going to use your energy? Are you going to sit in the road and block a motorway? Do you think that is going to be effective? Now, I don't pass judgment on it, but when I'm approached, because I do eco groups and eco committees in school, which is fantastic, and they ask me about the activism, I just say, ask yourself the question, how effective is this? And if your methodology
00:33:57
Speaker
of protesting is counterproductive because it turns whole nations against you, please just review what you're doing.
Understanding Climate Positive
00:34:07
Speaker
So I start, this is the concept of home, the book that I've written. Start with yourself, feel good about the place you're living through, because there's a very powerful scene in home where Leah's explaining to this young group at summer camp,
00:34:22
Speaker
She's just literally realized that if we don't treat the planet as our home, we can't protect her. And it seems such a simple, but this is our home. We're spinning around on this ball, a thousand miles an hour at the equator, spinning around the sun at whatever 64,000 miles. We're here in a universe, but in this
00:34:47
Speaker
massive universe that is way beyond our conception to do with the size of it here we are on this planet that's full of life it's our home whilst we're here whether you believe in an afterlife or not whilst we're here this is our home and if we connected with ourselves
00:35:05
Speaker
and for feeling good about this home that we carry around in, then we can connect to the planet and see her as our home. And if we treated her as our home, we'd want to protect her because you want to protect your home. So for me, the climate positive
00:35:21
Speaker
state of mind is definitely a way forward. And as families, you can discuss ways that you can do this. Yes, the recycling system isn't perfect, but by God, you can recycle a huge amount of things.
00:35:36
Speaker
if you get to know. So often, I go with children to the recycling place not far from here, so they can see actually that, yeah, some things are getting recycled properly. And if I may just to complete what I'm saying, because I guess we're running out of time, there is something in home that I would want to say about this, because
00:36:04
Speaker
There's a huge conflict that goes on in the middle of Leah's story, and it's at summer camp, and it's actually a really interesting conflict between Kaylee, who's 16 years old, and she's an out-and-out climate activist, very genuine, very authentic, and Leah. Now, it's a filmmaking project at summer camp, and Kaylee wants to make a film about the climate crisis, and Leah wants to make a film about home.
00:36:34
Speaker
And this is for a project for the end of summer camp. And so it's a clash between two philosophies. And Kaylee, there's a mediator that comes in who's a youth leader, Tongi from Chad, which is another part of the story. But Chad has suffered terribly, consequentially from
00:36:56
Speaker
you know, air pollution and everything that because Africa is relatively low carbon usage compared to the rest of the world. But he comes in to try and sort it out and he says to Kaylee, why do you want to make a film about the climate crisis? And she does a really passionate speech and then
00:37:17
Speaker
he turns to Leah and says, well, why do you want to make a film about home? And after they sort of sought this thing out, which I won't do a spoiler alert, they start to sort of get in cahoots together because Cayley sees that Leah's onto something big, and Leah is also a climate activist. So
00:37:38
Speaker
So I just read you this this last part before we go and Leah saying to Kaylee look, you know, I know you want to include all this stuff in in the movie we're making about the climate But just bear in mind that in 1992 a 12 year old girl could seven Suzuki gave a whole speech To the United Nations and they they all applauded fantastic and nothing changed it got worse
00:38:08
Speaker
So Leah's saying, look, everyone applauded seven Suzuki, made fantastic promises and did nothing. Since then, Greta and many others have been out there bravely campaigning and leading by example. But if politicians are listening and acting, then why is the climate getting so much worse?
00:38:30
Speaker
I hesitated for a few seconds, anticipating an argument. But then Cayley stood up. Yeah, I get that, agreed Cayley. It's getting worse, and I'm so sick of hearing net zero carbon emissions, blah, blah, from people who don't even know what it means. And anyway, everything's still rocketing up. CO2 and methane levels, extreme temperatures, natural disasters. I mean, aren't people absolutely terrified watching the polar ice caps melting, really?
00:39:00
Speaker
All this will only get worse unless the target is to go climate positive. Without reaching that target, I don't believe we're going to have a future. Kaylee's face had turned to thunder. So how can we get there? I asked Kaylee. Well, and this is what Kaylee says.
00:39:19
Speaker
This is one philosophy. Cayley says, almost every person alive can change their lifestyle from today, reducing their consumption, reusing and recycling more, wasting less, supporting sustainable farming,
00:39:36
Speaker
only buying cruelty-free products, which are also friendly to the environment, and so much more. The planet naturally recycles everything it produces 100%. So every single manufactured product should be 100% recyclable. Every single product, she emphasized.
00:39:57
Speaker
Leah then says, I so agree, Kaylee. I had a similar thought yesterday and also, well, I think that every leader on the planet needs to reduce their carbon footprint by 50% now, right now. That's the only way they can call themselves a leader in this crisis and be respected. Wouldn't that totally change the climate at the Next World Conference? To be climate positive, our whole mindset needs to change positively first, I argued.
00:40:24
Speaker
feeling like we were now both in sync. And then she goes on. So the thing about that is, yes, the activism, but the more each individual becomes a living example, forensically, in detail, every aspect of your life.
Practical Sustainable Living Tips
00:40:42
Speaker
You know, we've got, fortunately, in our back garden, we have all these raised beds where, you know, we're growing things, we're learning about the planet, we're, you know,
00:40:53
Speaker
Forest schools are now becoming much more popular. There is a wave of change happening. And I think if that gets more supported, there's just no time to wait on governments anymore. And it becomes a slightly bit of a lost cause.
00:41:11
Speaker
I'm saying it a long way around, Helen, that when it comes back to the reality of when you get off this podcast, your son, your daughter, the climate anxiety, which is absolutely real and clear and present, existential crisis,
00:41:29
Speaker
is starting from home, starting with what else could you do? And also about how you feel about things, because recycling is not enough. You've got to feel, when you put your little bag in the landfill, you've got to feel, I feel
00:41:47
Speaker
The only thing we put in absolute minimal is some things like polystyrene. Polystyrene, it should be banned. They say it takes a million years or forever to degrade, but you've got to feel, the more you feel for the planet, the more you're going to reduce the amount you put into landfill to absolutely minimal. You're going to be much more...
00:42:18
Speaker
There's gift companies, for example, like Green Tulip. They do ethical gifts. There's all kinds of play. And once you get into it, you realize that you're becoming much more positive because you're changing the climate in yourself. So do you think that that is a way to reduce your own anxiety? Because I think that a lot of the anxiety, even in the age of the teenagers,
00:42:45
Speaker
some of them feel very strongly about it and some of them have got their head in the sand potentially because they've got so much anxiety they've blocked it out and then there'll be some who couldn't care less because they're just in their own headspace for now. Do you think that doing as much as you can individually and as you say not just doing the stuff the obvious stuff but really thinking quite deeply about it and absorbing
00:43:15
Speaker
the planet into ourselves. Do you think that actually helps with the levels of anxiety? Because that's my concern. It can feel quite overwhelming. I feel it myself. I'm doing everything I can. I'm not doing everything I can. I could be doing more, but I'm doing a fair bit. And I still
00:43:39
Speaker
I shut it off at that point because I still think I'm scratching the surface because it's just me. And I've got people, you know, my daughter went to Reading Festival, you know, Reading and Leeds music festivals, and Boardmasters I see is the same.
00:43:57
Speaker
And even in the, I mean, it's a huge group, so I'm not calling out anyone in particular, but amongst the families who were planning that, because they do involve their parents because they're only 16 when they go. There's such a variety of approaches to how we manage situations like this. And I'm building up to the fact that
00:44:21
Speaker
A handful of people said, you know what? I've bought him a cheap tent. If it gets trashed and he leaves it there for the bulldozers, that's fine with me. And then there are people on the other side going, that doesn't sit right with me. That's not okay. These kids have to be taught to clean up after themselves and bring it home and process it properly and reuse it.
00:44:46
Speaker
faced with those people who think it's okay for the bulldozers to come in and shove the whole lot into landfill or who tell the lies about, oh, it's fine because all that stuff just gets picked up and sent to the homeless, which it doesn't.
00:45:06
Speaker
I'm feeling it now actually in my own body. It can become a panic situation again, at which point I want to put my head in the sand and stick my fingers in my ears and pretend it's not happening. So I'll go back to my original question. I've talked a lot. Do you think that by engaging in that sort of emotional way that you've described and that you talk about in the book,
00:45:28
Speaker
that will change my anxiety, for example, people and teenagers, people like me, their anxiety. Well, yes. I'll leave you with two points of consideration here. The answer to that is yes, absolutely. Because in the end, you're accountable to yourself. You can point the finger and so on. And I know young people, I know climate activists, the same age as your
00:45:57
Speaker
children who are absolutely burnt out on the protesting, on the da-da-da, and all the rest of it. Now, there's a very ancient wisdom, and the ancient wisdom is, God grant me the serenity.
00:46:12
Speaker
to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. So you can't put all your energy into pointing the finger. Sure, if you're in a circumstance like a music festival,
00:46:31
Speaker
People are going to be putting tons of stuff. Make your point, make your case, but you be that living example. You make sure you know where your tent comes from, the sustainability of what produced that tent. Now, the more people that are doing that and are setting the example, it's like they say to authors, show, don't tell. Don't tell people, show it.
00:46:55
Speaker
So you show it by the example that you lead, you feel good, that's what you're doing. You don't moralize about it. You don't say, well, look at my tent and look at all my sustainable, biodegradable things that I've got inside it. That is the life you're living. And I think Greta Thunberg, I have to say, I think she's often really underestimated because she lives
00:47:17
Speaker
that life, that way of life. And you can see, I mean, she gets trolled. It's horrific. Oh, I know. Yeah. But you can see she keeps it at home inside herself. She keeps that intactness. And the other thing that I would say, and this is particularly to adults, leaders, politicians, decision making, you know, the
00:47:41
Speaker
Think about the wisdom of the Iroquois Indians, and they're, as is known in America particularly, the seventh generation philosophy. That everything you do, every decision that you make now, think about its consequence in terms of seven generations, maybe 125 years, not the four-year tenure of your parliamentary responsibilities, but think about it in the context of the next seven generations.
00:48:09
Speaker
The politics is almost fixed so much. I never talk about politics. I never try and get into the political debates because the systems are fixed within short-termism. Within short-termism, it's all about instant results and papering over cracks and doing things which
00:48:29
Speaker
as I described in my last book, Caught in the Future, are about the alter things, but they don't change anything. And here we are in the run-up to COP28, the biggest climate conference on the planet. And where are we? Well, if you look at all the trends, whether it's CO2 or methane or
00:48:51
Speaker
any of the greenhouse gases, it's all on the up. And now it's much more visceral and visual because people are seeing all the floods and they're seeing the droughts and they're seeing it's an existential crisis.
Grassroots Environmental Change
00:49:07
Speaker
But it's going to have to start at grassroots. And that's the concept of home. Come home to yourself.
00:49:14
Speaker
feel good about this place that you live in and carry around with you every single day and protect this greater home that you're in and thereby protecting, you know, life itself. And that's that's what we've. So, you know, there's no panacea, there's no magic bullet, but there is definitely a starting place. And I'd like to see adults, young people channel more of their energy into being the change.
00:49:44
Speaker
and feeling good and feeling proud about the things that they're doing. I'll give one last example. There's quite a lot of schools now that have kitchen gardens or things like that, or raised beds somewhere. There's so much you can do, even if you don't have a lot of space either at home
00:50:02
Speaker
or at the school. And those little projects, that's when, you know, when I was seven years old, we had this postage stamp little garden, but my parents gave me a little bit of soil and I planted seeds. And it, you know, every day I'd run home thinking, you know, then suddenly the first green shoot comes up and bang, there you are, that hooked me for life.
00:50:23
Speaker
And from small green shoots, come big things if you take care of them. That's a brilliant message to finish on. Mark, do you want to just say a little bit about where people can get the book and what's coming next?
00:50:39
Speaker
Yeah, well, OK, so you can get your book, you know, Waterstones, independent bookstores and obviously, you know, ideally not Amazon. Well, you know, all the various websites. But, you know, when I'm visiting a school, my publishers try and work with the local independent booksellers. So I always encourage that. It's very widely available. And by the way, I haven't mentioned the color illustrations are
00:51:08
Speaker
as the Scotsman wrote, absolutely mesmerising, that the illustrations are beautiful, the colour, colour that's written throughout. What's coming next is that Home is the first of a trilogy and the second book which I'm doing, it was just going really well, is called Dragonfly and actually it's based on the principle of change and it's all about change, it's all about
00:51:33
Speaker
you know, how change is actually possible. And obviously, the theme of climate change continues in Book Two. So Dragonfly, I'm hoping, will be ready by the end of next year. A lot of people are already asking about it. And that's really exciting to see how the characters develop their relationships and certain new characters that come in in Book Two.
00:51:57
Speaker
Brilliant. Oh, well, exciting and really very topical and fascinating for young children and young teenagers and you're getting to them at exactly the right age just to say social consciousness is coming alive. Mark, it's been great chatting to you. Thank you for your time today. Pleasure. Absolutely. Thank you, Helen.
00:52:25
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. Thank you too to everyone who's already rated and reviewed the podcast. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Amazon, it would mean the world to me if you could leave a review. It really helps get the word out as well as making me very happy to read what you have to say. If this episode strikes a chord for you, please share it with anyone else you know who might be in the same boat and hit subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.
00:52:54
Speaker
If you have a story or a suggestion for something you'd like to see covered on the podcast, you can email me at teenagekickspodcast at gmail.com or message me on Instagram. I am Helen Wills. I love hearing from all my listeners. It really makes difference to me on this journey. See you next week when I'll be chatting to another brilliant guest about the highs and lows of parenting teens. Bye for now.